A future that doesn't end in another overdose, another hospital room, another desperate prayer that this time won't be the last.
That smile carries me through the four-hour drive home.
Through the quiet night and the empty bed.
Through the ache of missing her that settles back into my bones the moment I leave.
She's fighting.
She's getting better.
Our baby is growing inside her.
And somewhere in a prison cell two hours away, her father is hoping she'll give him a second chance.
It's not the life I imagined when I was nineteen and she was walking down the aisle toward me, beautiful and whole and untouched by the darkness that would consume us both.
But it's our life. The only one we've got.
Seven more weeks.
I can survive seven more weeks.
And when she walks out those doors, I'll be there waiting. Ready to start the rest of our lives.
One day at a time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Vanna
The letter sits on my desk for three days before I find the courage to start it.
Dear Dad.
I stare at those two words until they blur.
Dad.
I haven't called him that in twelve years.
Haven't thought of him as anything other than Rick Smith, inmate number 47291, the man who destroyed our family.
But Garrett went to see him.
Garrett, who has every reason to hate my father, drove two hours to Mount Olive and sat across from him and asked if recovery was real.
And my father—the man I blamed for everything—cried when he heard I was pregnant.
She's breaking the cycle, he said.
I pick up the pen again.
Dear Dad,
I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to write to you after twelve years of silence. I don't know how to be your daughter again, or if I even want to be.
But I'm trying to get better. I'm in rehab—a good one, in Pennsylvania. I've been here almost six weeks now. I'm clean. I'm pregnant. And I'm terrified.
